Monthly Archives: April 2014

Historic maps now online covering all of England and Wales

37,000 detailed maps that offer a fascinating glimpse into how every area of England and Wales developed from Victorian times to the 1950s are now available free online at the National Library of Scotland.

The six-inch to the mile series of Ordnance Survey maps, dating between 1842 and 1952, show how towns and cities have spread into the countryside and how the road and rail network developed.

Individual buildings and streets can be identified clearly and smaller features can be seen including post boxes, bollards on quaysides and mile posts. The maps can be viewed over time for each place of interest.

Mapping History – an introduction to historical maps and Digimap for Schools

The NLS Learning and Map Library teams in partnership with Archaeology Scotland, have created a new website for young people and community groups to learn about historical maps.

The site has both online and downloadable activities and a simple step-by-step guide which demonstrate how to read and use a wide range of maps. These activities can also be used to learn more about the history of an area using maps.

The Newport Ship is the most important late medieval merchant vessel yet recovered. Built after AD 1449 in northern Spain, she foundered at Newport twenty years later while undergoing repair. Since her discovery in 2002, further investigations have transformed historians’ understanding of fifteenth century ship technology. This cutting-edge conference will bring together maritime archaeologists and historians to celebrate and to explore the ship, consider her significance, and to locate the vessel within the commercial world from which she came.

We are hoping to limit the cost of attending the conference to a nominal charge of £10, which will cover registration, refreshments and lunch on both days. Attendance of the conference dinner on the Thursday night will be extra.

‘I find this work awesome! This is the way I see heritage: it’s about experience, sensibility, meaning-making … Walking, cycling, bodies on the move and interacting are very often the key to understand the making of heritage, aren’t they? I’m going to transmit this piece of information to somebody else I met in Swansea who practices a kind of psycho-geography :-)’

The Swansea Millennium Research Project has been set up by Swansea University’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research (MEMO), to research the origins of the city and to see what light this might shed on Wales’s place in the world before the Norman Conquest.